The Crimean Nexus: Putin's War and the Clash of Civilizations

How the West sleepwalked into another Cold War

A native of Yalta, Constantine Pleshakov is intimately familiar with Crimea's ethnic tensions and complex political history. Now, he offers a much-needed look at one of the most urgent flash points in current international relations: the first occupation and annexation of one European nation's territory by another since World War II.

Pleshakov illustrates how the proxy war unfolding in Ukraine is a clash of incompatible world views. To the U.S. a...